style

Michael B. Jordan, Grimes, and St. Vincent Describe What It Means to Be a Style Disrupter

In *Vanity Fair’*s March issue, photographers Inez and Vinoodh turn their lens on 23 figures, from disciplines as varied as film and fashion to art and architecture, who are shaking up the very meaning of the word “style” in their own singular way. Watch as Derek Blasberg goes behind the scenes of the shoot to discuss what it means to be a style disrupter.

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Jordan has emerged as one of the leading men of Young Hollywood: in the TV series Friday Night Lights, he played a quarterback from the wrong side of the tracks. In Fruitvale Station, he played Oscar Grant, an African-American youth who was fatally shot by a policeman in Oakland, on New Year’s Day in 2009. In Fantastic Four, he was a superhero who was so hot he could turn into a ball of fire. Jordan has his sights set on developing comics and graphic novels.

DISRUPTION: His performances in Fruitvale Station and last year’s Creed have helped thrust what could have been fringe stories into mainstream conversation.

The Oakland-born and U.S.C.-educated Coogler came to public attention for writing and directing Fruitvale Station. His subsequent project was a surprise punch: Creed, the next chapter of Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky franchise, with Michael B. Jordan playing Apollo Creed’s son, who sets out to find Rocky Balboa, the boxer who beat his dad.

DISRUPTION: He has succeeded as a young, black filmmaker in what is often criticized as an old, white industry. Next up: bringing Marvel’s iconic comic-book hero Black Panther to the screen.

Photo: Photograph by Inez and Vinoodh; Styled by Jessica Diehl.

KELELA
Musician, 32

Kelela calls her sound “left-of-center black electronica.” Her voice is influenced by jazz, her beats by R&B and underground club music. She’s still honing one skill, however: “I haven’t mastered the stiletto-run-around-onstage routine yet. I have to get my Beyoncé on and get back to you.”

DISRUPTION: “Blurring lines is my business right now. Actually, that’s always been my business, but now I get paid for it.”

Photo: Photograph by Inez and Vinoodh; Styled by Jessica Diehl.

TAVI GEVINSON
Actress, writer, and editor, 19

As a pre-teen, Gevinson wrote a blog from her suburban-Chicago bedroom called Style Rookie, which captivated the fashion world with its mature language and insightful observations. Her first disruption? The time she wore an oversize bow hat to a Dior fashion show in Paris and the editors sitting behind her complained. (She was 13.) Lately she’s been working as a stage actress, currently starring alongside Saoirse Ronan in a revival of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible on Broadway.

DISRUPTION: “Sometimes I think a lack of experience helps people do what they want to do.”

Photo: Photograph by Inez and Vinoodh; Styled by Jessica Diehl.

GRIMES
Producer, singer-songwriter, and artist, 27

L.A.-based, Grimes began her career as a sort of mythical musical illusion in Canada. She mixed her own music on a laptop, and she even did D.I.Y. music videos in public places. Her 2012 video, “Oblivion,” with its pop sound and powerful lyrics, has 22 million views and counting. She’s become a muse of fashion houses such as Louis Vuitton and Chanel, which in her world is as punk as it can get. “At a point, when it’s cool to be so anti-aesthetic, it becomes radical to start caring.”

DISRUPTION: She realized that the most disruptive thing to do in alternative culture is embrace Pop culture.

Photo: Photograph by Inez and Vinoodh; Styled by Jessica Diehl.

ALESSANDRO MICHELE
Creative director at Gucci, 43

“I tried to cause a little revolution at Gucci,” coos the 95-year-old label’s creative director. What happened after he presented his first men’s-wear show, in January 2015, which he put together in just five days? Vive la rivoluzione. Michele’s gender-bending, pansexual prints and silhouettes gave a high-fashion look to pop culture’s conversation about identity, heaping new praise—and sales—on the fashion house. “I am an anarchist, a free spirit. Freedom is a founding principle, and it also means dressing oneself freely without its being dictated by gender.”

DISRUPTION: “I do not have a strategy. I’m guided by my instincts and by what I like.”

Photo: Photograph by Inez and Vinoodh; Styled by Jessica Diehl.

ST. VINCENT
Musician, 33

Early in her career, St. Vincent, whose real name is Annie Clark, performed in a choral rock band before honing what is now an entirely original experimental sound. She was awarded the Grammy for best alternative-music album in 2015. She has a Bowie-like quality: “I wear costumes onstage because it’s about a different reality,” she says. And she also happens to be dating model-of-the-moment Cara Delevingne.

DISRUPTION: She has released four solo records and is the first female to have won the alternative-album Grammy in two decades

Photo: Photograph by Inez and Vinoodh; Styled by Jessica Diehl.

CARY JOJI FUKUNAGA
Writer, director, and cinematographer, 38

Fukunaga directed the first season of HBO’s True Detective and helped to establish the show’s cult status. When his Beasts of No Nation, which follows a young boy’s survival through the atrocious civil wars in West Africa, was released on Netflix and in theaters simultaneously, Hollywood’s concept of feature-film distribution was redefined.

DISRUPTION: Netflix has over 75 million subscribers. “That’s what you want as a director: you want millions of people to see what you do.”

Jordan has emerged as one of the leading men of Young Hollywood: in the TV series Friday Night Lights, he played a quarterback from the wrong side of the tracks. In Fruitvale Station, he played Oscar Grant, an African-American youth who was fatally shot by a policeman in Oakland, on New Year’s Day in 2009. In Fantastic Four, he was a superhero who was so hot he could turn into a ball of fire. Jordan has his sights set on developing comics and graphic novels.

DISRUPTION: His performances in Fruitvale Station and last year’s Creed have helped thrust what could have been fringe stories into mainstream conversation.

The Oakland-born and U.S.C.-educated Coogler came to public attention for writing and directing Fruitvale Station. His subsequent project was a surprise punch: Creed, the next chapter of Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky franchise, with Michael B. Jordan playing Apollo Creed’s son, who sets out to find Rocky Balboa, the boxer who beat his dad.

DISRUPTION: He has succeeded as a young, black filmmaker in what is often criticized as an old, white industry. Next up: bringing Marvel’s iconic comic-book hero Black Panther to the screen.

Photograph by Inez and Vinoodh; Styled by Jessica Diehl.

KELELA
Musician, 32

Kelela calls her sound “left-of-center black electronica.” Her voice is influenced by jazz, her beats by R&B and underground club music. She’s still honing one skill, however: “I haven’t mastered the stiletto-run-around-onstage routine yet. I have to get my Beyoncé on and get back to you.”

DISRUPTION: “Blurring lines is my business right now. Actually, that’s always been my business, but now I get paid for it.”

Photograph by Inez and Vinoodh; Styled by Jessica Diehl.

TAVI GEVINSON
Actress, writer, and editor, 19

As a pre-teen, Gevinson wrote a blog from her suburban-Chicago bedroom called Style Rookie, which captivated the fashion world with its mature language and insightful observations. Her first disruption? The time she wore an oversize bow hat to a Dior fashion show in Paris and the editors sitting behind her complained. (She was 13.) Lately she’s been working as a stage actress, currently starring alongside Saoirse Ronan in a revival of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible on Broadway.

DISRUPTION: “Sometimes I think a lack of experience helps people do what they want to do.”

Photograph by Inez and Vinoodh; Styled by Jessica Diehl.

GRIMES
Producer, singer-songwriter, and artist, 27

L.A.-based, Grimes began her career as a sort of mythical musical illusion in Canada. She mixed her own music on a laptop, and she even did D.I.Y. music videos in public places. Her 2012 video, “Oblivion,” with its pop sound and powerful lyrics, has 22 million views and counting. She’s become a muse of fashion houses such as Louis Vuitton and Chanel, which in her world is as punk as it can get. “At a point, when it’s cool to be so anti-aesthetic, it becomes radical to start caring.”

DISRUPTION: She realized that the most disruptive thing to do in alternative culture is embrace Pop culture.

Photograph by Inez and Vinoodh; Styled by Jessica Diehl.

SPIKE JONZE
Writer and director, 46

Jonze’s uncanny ability to tap into the cool kids’ Zeitgeist has helped him to assemble an impressive résumé, which includes an Oscar for best original screenplay, for Her, the 2014 movie about a man who falls in love with his operating system. His new role is as the co-president of Viceland, the Vice media empire’s own cable network. “I hope it’s a conversation between us and the viewers. It’s like the beginning of a group mural that many voices will add to.”

DISRUPTION: “It’s simple: we’re trying to make things that we are excited about, or confused about, or [that we think] are funny.”

Photograph by Inez and Vinoodh; Styled by Jessica Diehl.

DAKOTA JOHNSON AND KATE YOUNG
Actress, 26; Fashion stylist, 40

While taking off her clothes in Fifty Shades of Grey may have helped make her famous, it’s what she’s been putting on that’s influencing her style status. The daughter of 1980s icons Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson, and the granddaughter of one of Hitchcock’s muses, Tippi Hedren, she can be seen in the comedy How to Be Single and the provocative thriller A Bigger Splash.

DISRUPTION: A coterie of international fashion designers are clamoring to dress her. “I want to feel like the most elegant version of myself when I have the opportunity to wear beautiful gowns. Because at some point they come off and my real clothes go back on.”

Young started her career as a wild child in London’s fashion scene in the 1990s before moving to New York and working as Anna Wintour’s assistant at Vogue. Her editorial career flourished, but she hit her stride with styling for celebrity clients such as Michelle Williams, Sienna Miller, Rachel Weisz, and Selena Gomez. And, of course, it was Young who orchestrated Dakota Johnson’s well-edited international fashion tour this past fall.

DISRUPTION: “Simplicity is refreshing. A dress should say something about the person who’s wearing it. Not the other way around.”

Photograph by Inez and Vinoodh; Styled by Jessica Diehl.

HARI NEF
Actress and model, 23

Last year was a busy one for Nef. She graduated from Columbia, scored a role on Amazon TV’s series Transparent, and became modeling powerhouse IMG’s first-ever transgender model with a global contract.

DISRUPTION: “I feel like the people who are most disruptive are just trying to be really casual about something that’s not casual for other people. Normal is the new abnormal.”

Photograph by Inez and Vinoodh; Styled by Jessica Diehl.

MELINA MATSOUKAS
Music-video and commercial director, 34

Matsoukas’s devotion to aesthetics has created a long list of devoted fans, including Beyoncé, Jay Z, Snoop Dogg, and Jennifer Lopez. The music video she directed for Rihanna’s hit “We Found Love” earned her a 2013 Grammy and MTV’s Video of the Year.

DISRUPTION: More than one billion people have viewed her work on YouTube. “Style is another form of artistry.”

Photograph by Inez and Vinoodh; Styled by Jessica Diehl.

LUCY CHADWICK
Gallerist, 35

Chadwick’s full-time job is as the director of the art gallery Gavin Brown’s enterprise. But her unofficial, part-time job is as a street-style star. She favors bold, textural, and architectural pieces, much like the artwork found in her gallery. “The fashion peacocking circus is a fascinating cacophony of visual delights.”

DISRUPTION: “You want to disturb, but not distract. Progression feeds off disruption.”

Photograph by Inez and Vinoodh; Styled by Jessica Diehl.

A$AP ROCKY
Recording artist, 27

Following his instincts has paid off for rapper and hip-hop heartthrob A$AP Rocky, who made this year’s Forbes 30 Under 30 list. And his two most recent records—Long.Live.A$AP, in 2013, and 2015’s *At.Long.Last.A$AP—*both debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 list. “The kids, they don’t know, so it’s my duty as A$AP Rocky to re-introduce some of these things,” he says of his collaboration with Guess Originals on their 1990s hip-hop-inspired collection.

DISRUPTION: Fans come to the rapper for sick beats, aggressive lyrics, and strong swagger. Fashion brands embrace him for his cool factor. A$AP has an insatiable curiosity and creative unpredictability that always yield the same results—$$.

Photograph by Inez and Vinoodh; Styled by Jessica Diehl.

LINEISY MONTERO
Model, 19

Montero’s first fashion show was an exclusive appearance in Prada’s fall 2015 collection. Her defining characteristic is a closely shorn Afro, a hairstyle she started wearing as a young girl in the Dominican Republic. “Now I really love it natural, it’s my staple look.”

DISRUPTION: At a time of questionable fashion diversity, Montero’s domination of the runways is a breath of fresh air.

Photograph by Inez and Vinoodh; Styled by Jessica Diehl.

NICK WOOSTER
Designer and “free agent,” 55

Wooster began his fashion career at 16, working at a shop in his Kansas hometown. In the next four decades, his career took him through the ranks at Barneys, Bergdorf Goodman, and Neiman Marcus. Street style is his latest act. “I believe in the sartorial mullet: classic on top, avant-garde on bottom.”

DISRUPTION: “If you were doing it five years ago, you’re doing the wrong thing.”

Photograph by Inez and Vinoodh; Styled by Jessica Diehl.

KENDALL JENNER
Model and reality-TV star, 20

The fifth of Kris Jenner’s six children and the elder of the two she has with Caitlyn Jenner, Kendall is the top of a crop of “social-media supermodels,” a handful of women (including Cara Delevingne and Gigi Hadid) who are the darlings of both high fashion and publicly followed social-media accounts. In 2015, Jenner made it onto the Forbes list of the highest-paid models, scored four international Vogue covers, and signed a deal with Calvin Klein, all on top of her existing lucrative cosmetics contract with Estée Lauder.

DISRUPTION: Single-handedly proved that it’s possible to keep up with the Kardashians—and also Karl Lagerfeld. She closed last season’s Chanel haute couture show in Paris.

Photograph by Inez and Vinoodh; Styled by Jessica Diehl.

BJARKE INGELS
Architect, 41

Ingels is one of the architects behind New York’s Big U, a structure off the southern tip of Manhattan designed to protect against rising sea levels and hurricanes. He is also involved with VIA, on West 57th Street, which looks like a breaking wave with its slanted roofs allowing sunlight to flood its courtyard.

YAEL AFLALO
Founder and C.E.O. of Reformation, 38

In 2008, Aflalo visited factories in China and was shocked to observe the pollution resulting from fashion production. The following year, she founded the American-made clothing company Reformation, which adheres to sustainable business practices, including recycling existing fabrics.

DISRUPTION: “We make sustainable clothes and we genuinely care about the environment.”

Photograph by Inez and Vinoodh; Styled by Jessica Diehl.

GEORGE BAMFORD
Founder of Bamford Watch Department, 35

When Bamford arrived at a dinner party to show off his Rolex Daytona, he was crestfallen to discover everyone else wearing the same watch. “I felt like a lady who turned up at the Oscars wearing the same dress as someone else,” he says. The result was a customization service for top-tier men’s watches.

DISRUPTION: “ ‘Why aren’t I doing it my way?’ ”

Photograph by Inez and Vinoodh; Styled by Jessica Diehl.

SEAN BAKER
Writer and director, 45

Baker’s 2015 film, Tangerine, was made with the tools of modern culture’s connectivity: he cast off Vine; he culled the soundtrack from YouTube and Soundcloud; and he shot the entire movie on an iPhone.

DISRUPTION: “We turned to these things to find inspiration,” he says. “But don’t we turn to the Internet nowadays for everything?”

Photograph by Inez and Vinoodh; Styled by Jessica Diehl.

ALISON MOSSHART
Musician and artist, 37

Mosshart admits to having a split personality: in private, she’s soft-spoken and quiet. Onstage, when headlining for either the Kills (which she founded with Jamie Hince in 2000) or the Dead Weather (formed from a friendship with Jack White in 2009), she’s a jumping, sweating, screaming animal.

DISRUPTION: She has repelled and embraced music’s tech advances and in the process created her own folksy electronica. “I think, when I force myself back into that Stone Age realm, I actually do better work because I’m less distracted by the buzz of today’s heavy fog of impatience. I’m thankful for invention and high-speed everything, but I’m just as high-speed without it.”

Photograph by Inez and Vinoodh; Styled by Jessica Diehl.

ALESSANDRO MICHELE
Creative director at Gucci, 43

“I tried to cause a little revolution at Gucci,” coos the 95-year-old label’s creative director. What happened after he presented his first men’s-wear show, in January 2015, which he put together in just five days? Vive la rivoluzione. Michele’s gender-bending, pansexual prints and silhouettes gave a high-fashion look to pop culture’s conversation about identity, heaping new praise—and sales—on the fashion house. “I am an anarchist, a free spirit. Freedom is a founding principle, and it also means dressing oneself freely without its being dictated by gender.”

DISRUPTION: “I do not have a strategy. I’m guided by my instincts and by what I like.”

Photograph by Inez and Vinoodh; Styled by Jessica Diehl.

ST. VINCENT
Musician, 33

Early in her career, St. Vincent, whose real name is Annie Clark, performed in a choral rock band before honing what is now an entirely original experimental sound. She was awarded the Grammy for best alternative-music album in 2015. She has a Bowie-like quality: “I wear costumes onstage because it’s about a different reality,” she says. And she also happens to be dating model-of-the-moment Cara Delevingne.

DISRUPTION: She has released four solo records and is the first female to have won the alternative-album Grammy in two decades

Photograph by Inez and Vinoodh; Styled by Jessica Diehl.

CARY JOJI FUKUNAGA
Writer, director, and cinematographer, 38

Fukunaga directed the first season of HBO’s True Detective and helped to establish the show’s cult status. When his Beasts of No Nation, which follows a young boy’s survival through the atrocious civil wars in West Africa, was released on Netflix and in theaters simultaneously, Hollywood’s concept of feature-film distribution was redefined.

DISRUPTION: Netflix has over 75 million subscribers. “That’s what you want as a director: you want millions of people to see what you do.”